Why Is It Different Here ?

How come infant adoption doesn’t exist in countries with social safety nets??

Because women don’t willingly give up babies without coercion and desperate circumstances.

The point above is that many countries outside the US have less than 200 adoptions annually…some only a handful. WHY?

Because they don’t allow it to be a multi billion dollar industry
It is NOT privatized
It is illegal to adopt on your own – no internet/friend matches
They have a social support system to help families stay together.

Some additional comments –

The social nets in the US need serious overhaul. I work in a hospital and some of the situations I’ve seen people in are heartbreaking, infuriating, sickening. It makes sense that countries with ACTUAL support see fewer broken families all around.

It was sad to see this one – I wish it was like this everywhere. I’m from Ukraine and it’s a sh*tshow – lots of kids abandoned, horrific dysfunction, zero support. It’s terrible.

Safety nets include but are not limited to: proper science based sex ed, access to birth control of the patients choice, access to medical care, plus abortion accessibility. Access to housing and therapy. I have found a lot of people assume support is $$$ and while that is true to a degree, it is not the whole picture. Building community is the best thing we can do. To which someone else noted – but realistically money solves a ton of issues.

From an adoptee – Safety nets and social resources are so important. It is deeply disturbing that we pay so much lip service to “children are our greatest resource” and pretending that we are all about “family values,” but when push comes to shove, it’s really about greed and selfishness. We need to elect politicians who are more interested in people than money and power.

A transracial adoptee notes – I hate it when they try to make it seem like there are soooo many abandoned babies. Even if there is an expectant mom who wants to give birth (which how many pregnant people are truly willing to give birth, especially in a country with a high mortality rate, to just relinquish the baby) but does not want to parent (as in they have the ability/support/the means to parent but truly do not want to & wouldn’t/couldn’t abort), then what about the father? And if he really absolutely does not want to parent, do they really not have a single family member or honestly even close family friend who would take in the baby? Like the leap to having absolute strangers adopt the baby is just too much for me honestly. I frankly find it a bit hard to believe that there are so many situations where there are 2 capable expectant parents who simply don’t want parent and for not a single family member be capable/willing to take care of the child.

Another explains – it’s the private adoption industry taking the foster care statistic of approximately 100,000 post-Termination of Parental Rights youth in this country, and just conveniently not mentioning that almost none of them are babies or toddlers. And then, if challenged, they will say ‘but this prevents them from ending up in foster care, aging out without a family,’ although I imagine that would not be relevant to the majority of parents who relinquish privately.

Which brought this recognition – I’ve actually found it incredibly bizarre how some very educated and intelligent people in my life, people who understand systems of oppression in regards to other demographics, a) don’t seem to get that no one gets pregnant to happily turn around and relinquish and b) refuse to understand that different age groups in the foster care system likely have different needs and require different approaches.

And this story from an expectant mother – I’m 42, expecting my 4th. My 1st, I was a single mother when her father left when she was 15 months old. I was a single mother for 10 years when I met my husband. But I thrived. I had a career, bought my own house, could afford a comfortable life. When I married, we had 2 boys over 8 years of marriage. My husband comes from a long line of mental illnesses, which he inherited. Both our boys are special needs, ASD among others. I’m in the middle of a long divorce as my husband is dragging it out and controlling it all as long as he can. I’m now a single mother for a second time. Eventually started casually seeing someone and got pregnant the second time we were together. He immediately jumped ship and was adamant he doesn’t want anything to do with it. Doesn’t want to be on the birth certificate. Nothing. This pregnancy will make me a single mother for essentially a 3rd time, at the age of 43. I am over being a single mother. I don’t want to do this for 40 years straight. I am older. I have no family that would take a baby. I had zero interest in abortion, I live in a state where it’s still legal, but that’s not something I agree with and I couldn’t live with myself. So, yes, I’m the mom that would carry to term just so I wasn’t killing the baby. I also couldn’t live with the what if’s with adoption. So I’m simply left with parenting. Do I want to? No. It’s simply the only option that doesn’t leave me with what ifs for the rest of my life. I fit everything you said is a far stretch. Father does not want, I would not abort, I have already been a single mother most of my entire adult life, so I know I CAN do it, but I don’t want to anymore. I’ve lived that phase of my life. I’m currently reliving that phase of my life with 2 challenging kiddos. And now, my awful luck has me starting all over again a 3rd time. And being in this position, I’ve come to realize there are lots of older women in my position for different reasons. Thought they went through menopause, Birth Control failed, whatever. Married, divorced, there are lots of us. So many people think this is a “young mom” issue, but there is an older crowd no one considers because we aren’t the norm.

Another agreed – the majority from the statistics I’ve seen who are getting abortions are married or divorced older women. I don’t see many choosing adoption at that age.

And a perspective from the United Kingdom – The UK has plenty of adoption, largely because our social services and safety net are so full of holes, struggling families don’t get help and their kids get taken away. What we don’t have is abandoned babies or people voluntarily giving up their infants. Because we have free, readily available abortion for people who really don’t want a kid, free healthcare (even if the government is currently running the service into the ground) and enough of a basic safety net (however fraying) that is usually sufficient that people who choose to give birth don’t feel they have to then give away their children due to poverty. I have a mountain of criticism for the ways our society is failing families, and letting them fall apart, but I still look at the United States in horror at how much worse it is.

Break The Cycle

Early on in my education regarding all things adoption (which includes foster care), I became aware of a lot of valid evidence that trauma is passed down through families. I could see how this happened in my own family.

Take my parents (both adopted) original mothers. My dad’s mother lost her own mother only 3 months after her birth and went on to endure a truly wicked step-mother. My mom’s mother lost her own mother at the age of 11. Being the oldest, she inherited younger siblings to care for, the youngest not yet one year old. Her father never remarried, which might be just as well, but I have heard now what I suspected – he was a hard man, who without his wife, didn’t know how to love. There is trauma, particularly for a daughter who loses her mother.

There are my parents who were both torn from their mothers and surrendered to adoption. My mom’s mother was exploited in her financial duress by Georgia Tann in the 1930s when social safety nets didn’t exist. After months of resisting their pressure, my dad’s mother gave in to The Salvation Army and surrendered her son to them, which eventually led to his own adoption. I’m entirely convinced that had my grandmothers had sufficient support and encouragement, they would have raised their children. It is entirely possible that had their mothers been alive, they would not have relinquished.

My parents found each other in high school. Though they both shared the backhole void of origin information as adoptees, they were not of the same perspective regarding their adoptions. My mom confided this to me because she couldn’t talk about her yearning to locate her original mother to my dad who warned her against opening a can of worms. They were good enough parents. We knew we were loved but they were strangely detached as parents. I only know this as an adult observing how other parents generally feel a long-term involvement in their children’s lives.

With me, I knew they expected me to leave as soon as I graduated from high school and so, I married and a year later had a daughter (for which I am eternally grateful). The marriage was flawed by the time I was pregnant with her and by the time she was 3 years old, I was no longer married but also unable to support us as my ex-husband refused to pay any child support (since it was my decision to leave him). Eventually, he ended up raising her. She ended up with a stay at home stepmother and for the most part, it seems to have worked out for the best – for her – but never for me. I still struggle with coming to terms with having been an absentee mother over 60 years later.

Both of my sisters gave up a child to adoption. One, considering it quite normal (and now the truth be known there was an extremely complicating factor – the father was a good friend of our dad’s), always intended to relinquish. Shocking to me was that our own mom, who struggled with having been adopted herself, pressured and guided my other sister to give up her baby for adoption – and she tried to get the support of the social safety net that existed in the late 70s, early 80s but was refused because she was sheltering with our parents while pregnant and their financial strength was used against my sister’s request for assistance. That sister also lost her first born in an ugly custody case brought by her in-laws when she divorced that child’s father.

Mostly, these children of ours are breaking the cycle and are wonderful parents. One has struggled with failed marriages but has remained solid with his own son. I hope these recent successes continue on down our family line.

Oversharing In The Classroom

I am frequently surprised how common some connection to adoption is. If you were an adoptee, how would YOU have felt if your teacher in school openly shared with the classroom information about her “adoption journey” as it is ongoing? How would hearing details about “matching” and “failed adoptions have affected you!? How would a “slideshow” announcing the birth of teacher’s adopted child affect you?

These questions were put to my all things adoption group – and adoptees and former foster youth were asked to be the only responders (and not parents who had given a child up for adoption, adoptive parents or foster caregivers).

Some replies –

I would have been so uncomfortable but wouldn’t have known how to voice that as a student. Even now as an adult who is coming into my power, I still shake like a leaf when I speak my truth about the trauma of adoption.

My 5th grade teacher adopted a boy they were fostering. It wasn’t infant adoption with that whole journey, but we all certainly knew this boy. He was always in her classroom during lunch or after school. As I was only 10, I guess it solidified a lot of the propaganda I was fed my whole life. I liked it because I felt like I related to it? I didn’t know any other adoptees at the time. But I was a child! As an adult out of the fog, looking back, I feel very uncomfortable about it. I’m not sure how else to say it.

I would have felt very awkward. It seems so very personal to share with people at school. Especially children. They aren’t in a position to understand or put into context what any of that means. I would also feel that it was attention seeking behavior. It’s just someone playing at being a hero. No thanks.

Would have made me f**king uncomfortable as a kid, and it makes me furious as an adult. Don’t freaking normalize the act of switching babies from one family to another. We need kids growing up with a better understanding of how damaging our current way of dealing with family disfunction is. If this was one of my kids teachers I would demand it stop.

I would still keep my own adoption a secret. And I would feel terrorized.

I was very much “in the fog” for my entire childhood and most of adulthood so I wouldn’t have noticed anything problematic about it. I wanted to be like other kids so much that I probably would have been kind of glad to see someone else in my daily life was affected by adoption too, as it would mean I would be less singled out as having an alternative family structure.

I have to say I find the failed adoption thing the weirdest part, then and now. I was always assured that adoption was permanent and they wouldn’t have it any other way so I’m sure that probably would have made me feel …uncomfortable? Normalizing the process of ….deciding you don’t want that child after all. That is what they mean by failed adoption, right?

Someone else thought that last one wasn’t what was meant in this particular situation (though sadly such a think as second chance adoptions actually do happen in reality). So the counter response was – I have to imagine by failed adoption they mean the baby’s natural parents decided not to go through with the adoption. Which is always disturbing. Hopeful adoptive parents act like that was something bad that someone did to them, or they were “tricked” or that someone took their baby away.

I would have been so upset and not even known why because that’s pretty much how triggering worked when I was a kid. I can look back and connect all the dots now, but not then. I would have been a mess. It would have manifested into days and maybe weeks of negative behavior to myself and to others.

This makes my stomach churn now. I can imagine it would have affected me similarly at the time but I wouldn’t have known exactly why.

I remember being 11 or 12 years old, when the a teacher started talking to me about Child Protective Services and my potential removal. I know it’s not the same but I heavily didn’t want to associate home life and school life. Because it’s their personal thing, OK mention it once I hear you, but it would have me outright avoiding their class, probably with some defiance, if it were repetitive. I don’t know if I would have even had the language then to express my feelings.

If you doubt adoptees suffer trauma, consider what the above adoptees have said consistently.

Some From Foster to Adopt Thoughts

The image is NOT the person who’s thoughts I will share today but it is not uncommon that people who foster end up adopting one of their foster care children. And so, here’s the story for today.

I’m a foster parent and have adopted from foster care. I’ve been in this (adoption related) group for a bit and I have been trying to learn and listen to all of you. I absolutely hate the toxic positivity and saviorism in the adoption world and the lack of understanding about trauma and the systemic issues that cause removals and adoptions that can largely be prevented. This needs to stop. However, I’m not understanding what you would suggest current foster parents do?

We didn’t go into foster care in order to adopt, we went into it to prevent family separations. We have always been active in helping the parents, in anyway that we can, get their kids back and keep a relationship with them. We have only adopted in cases that were extremely abusive and dangerous to the kids.

I don’t understand what your solution for these kids would be besides adoption? Kids that themselves have chosen not to continue a relationship with their family. Kids that say they want a new family. I see people in this group say to do permanent guardianship, but how is that not treating them as less than your other kids? Not letting them call you mom/dad if they want and not legally being a member of the family.

My kids were old enough to understand what happened and they asked for us to adopt them. They wanted to heal and have a safe and stable family. I’m in no way a savior or a hero or anything close to that for adopting. I just want to be there for these kids. I’m open minded, I want to hear from the adopted adults on their thoughts, which is why I joined this group. I want to do what’s best for them now and for their future and I have no desire to erase their history or original family from them.

So in response, not in regard to this specific situation, but from the big picture point of view came these important perspectives –

The solution is actually really simple. Address the reasons kids end up in care. Neglect is the number one reason and usually stems from addiction. So, tackle addiction with better programs that work that are not just accessible to the rich. Better social supports so families are not struggling. We need to reduce removals.

Guardianship has been practiced forever. Families have raised kids not their own since the dawn of time. It does not require legally severing a child’s identity. It does not require falsifying documentation. You can love and care for a child without that. They don’t need your last name to feel loved and cared for. It’s literally just paperwork. Adoption is not necessary.

A good adoption story (they exist, in fact, it can be said that both of my parents who were adopted, had good lives) does not make children being removed from their parents ok. Families need to be helped BEFORE they get to a point of their kids being removed. As a society, we need to truly care about family preservation. Society needs to wake up enough to stop seeing adoption and foster care as something that saves children. Until that awareness becomes common, nothing about foster care or adoption will change.

Adoptees may never feel a sense of belonging to their adoptive family because it’s not their family. That may be hard for people who believe in adoption to accept but it is the obvious reality. If there were less foster/adoptive homes, the system would have to change. A change in what qualifies for removal, a change in what it takes to get kids home. All the money now wasted on foster homes could go back into social programs to help families.

If you want to help families, get out of the foster system if you are a part of it. Start working with local shelters and other organizations that help struggling families avoid Child Protective Services. Join programs that help foster youth aging out. Be an ally to parents caught up in the system. It’s a warped system that profits off of the destruction of families. It is also that simple.

Love Isn’t Always On Time

Since I believe reality is never wrong, I know that my parents conception, birth, adoption, marriage, parenting was all just as it was meant to be. No one escapes this Life without wounds and some are more wounded than others but we were not promised a rose garden when we agreed to spend some time incarnated upon this planet.

So the romantic relationships and/or marriages that conceived my parents were not wrong. I do believe my grandparents all loved one another. The Great Depression and a lack of social safety nets certainly played it’s role in separating my grandparents and in separating their children from them.

In learning about my true, genetic roots, one of my joys has been to discover that every one of my grandparents eventually found a lasting love with someone else. Every one of them remarried and stayed married until death.

So in a bizarre paradoxical way, I accept that all the sadness and grief were somehow necessary for me to be conceived. It was also necessary for the souls of my grandparents to learn and grow into better people who could find love and stay married after their early failures.

Love. It is what we are here to do.